Description:
Thirty years ago, half the developing
world lived in extreme poverty today, a quarter. Now, a much
smaller share of children are malnourished and at risk of
early death. And access to modern infrastructure is much
more widespread. Critical to the progress: rapid economic
growth driven by technological innovation and institutional
reform, particularly in today's middle- income
countries, where per capita incomes have doubled. Yet the
needs remain enormous, with the number of hungry people
having passed the billion marks this year for the first time
in history. With so many still in poverty and hunger, growth
and poverty alleviation remain the overarching priority for
developing countries. Climate change only makes the
challenge more complicated. First, the impacts of a changing
climate are already being felt, with more droughts, more
floods, more strong storms, and more heat waves-taxing
individuals, firms, and governments, drawing resources away
from development. Second, continuing climate change, at
current rates, will pose increasingly severe challenges to
development. By century's end, it could lead to warming
of 5°C or more compared with preindustrial times and to a
vastly different world from today, with more extreme weather
events, most ecosystems stressed and changing, many species
doomed to extinction, and whole island nations threatened by
inundation. Even our best efforts are unlikely to stabilize
temperatures at anything less than 2°C above preindustrial
temperatures, warming that will require substantial
adaptation. High income countries can and must reduce their
carbon footprints. They cannot continue to fill up an unfair
and unsustainable share of the atmospheric commons. But
developing countries whose average per capita emissions are
a third those of high income countries need massive
expansions in energy, transport, urban systems, and
agricultural production. If pursued using traditional
technologies and carbon intensities, these much-needed
expansions will produce more greenhouse gases and, hence,
more climate change. The question, then, is not just how to
make development more resilient to climate change. It is how
to pursue growth and prosperity without causing
"dangerous" climate change.